How to negotiate rates

[luciddreamerfrench]

Hi all,

I'm a french guy trying to land a contracting job in the UK as an aeronautical engineer (3 years exp) and I am now in contact with several agencies. Most of the time, they say they can only pay me around 30£/hour + fixed price package or additional hours. What do these additional hours and fixed price package exactly mean?

Thanks again for your answer.

Luc

[Old Hack]

Hi all,

I'm a french guy trying to land a contracting job in the UK as an aeronautical engineer (3 years exp) and I am now in contact with several agencies. Most of the time, they say they can only pay me around 30£/hour + fixed price package or additional hours. What do these additional hours and fixed price package exactly mean?

Thanks again for your answer.

Luc

Fixed price means just that: there's no wriggle room. Additional hours simply means you can work more than the alloted hours in the contract i.e. you can work more than say 40 hours. Normally in the UK, you get extra for working overtime e.g. 2*£30 an hour on Sundays, 1.5*£30 an hour Saturdays, but that would be up to you to negotiate.

You may get better advice by looking for a specialist website specific to Aeronautical Engineers. There are also some ex fly boys here who may be able to point you somewhere (Gibbon?).

Good luck anyway, hope like it here.

[kingcook]

Most of the time, they say they can only pay me around 30£/hour

For most of the time, tell them you can only accept e.g. £40/hr, and work it from there.

What about the rest of the time? Go for those gigs maybe?

[Troll]

Hi all,

I'm a french guy trying to land a contracting job in the UK as an aeronautical engineer (3 years exp) and I am now in contact with several agencies. Most of the time, they say they can only pay me around 30£/hour + fixed price package or additional hours. What do these additional hours and fixed price package exactly mean?

Thanks again for your answer.

Luc

Is it the availability of aeronautical jobs, the range of aeronautical jobs or something else that is making you look for UK roles?

Just wondering as I thought EADS was bigger (and hence more jobs) in France than the UK

[luciddreamerfrench]

Is it the availability of aeronautical jobs, the range of aeronautical jobs or something else that is making you look for UK roles?

Just wondering as I thought EADS was bigger (and hence more jobs) in France than the UK

Thanks all for your quick answers.

Old Hack: For example, if I work more than 40 hours in a week time (lets say 50 hours on weekdays), are those 10 hours considered as working overtime? Or are those additional hours only related to Sat/sunday working hours?

Troll : Working as a contractor in France might be as financially interesting than contracting work in UK but you really have less responsabilities in France (if you want to have a little bit of responsabilities you need to go permanent).